Havighurst Lecture

October 9, 2019

Roza Otunbayeva, former President of Kyrgyzstan

Roza Otunbayeva is a Kyrgyz diplomat and politician who served as the President of Kyrgyzstan from April 2010 until December 2011. She was sworn in on July 3, 2010, after acting as interim leader following the April 2010 revolution which led to the ousting of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Harry T. Wilks Theater, Armstrong Center, 4:30pm

Past Havighurst Lectures

2018-19

Herta Müller, 2009 Nobel Prize Winner in LiteratureA Conversation about Truth and Power

Herta Müller was born in a farming family living in Nitchidorf, outside Timisoara, Romania. Her family belonged to Romania's German-speaking minority, whose vulnerable position during Ceaușescu's communist regime came to color her life and literary works. Herta Müller was dismissed from her position as a translator after refusing to cooperate with the Securitate secret police, becoming a teacher and author instead; she went into exile in Germany in 1987. Her literary works address an individual's vulnerability under oppression and persecution, rooted in her experiences as one of Romania's German-speaking ethnic minority. Herta Müller describes how dictatorship breeds a fear and alienation that stays in an individual's mind.

2017-18

Georgi Gospodinov and Dejan KyuranovCommunism Lived and Remembered

Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov and former dissident Deyan Kyuranov, a political scientist at the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, took part in an armchair-style discussion about Communism Lived and Remebered, as part of the Havighurst Center's Truth and Power series.

2016-17

Jack Matlock, former Ambassador of the United States to the USSR and Russia

Former Ambassador of the United States to the USSR and Russia, Jack Matlock (1987-1991) engaged in an armchair-style discussion about Russia today and American policy toward Russia.

2012-13

John Pepper, Former Chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble

John Pepper joined Procter & Gamble in 1963 and was named the president in 1986. Mr. Pepper retired from the company in 2002 and continued as chair of the Executive Committee of the board for an additional year. In his book Russian Tide, Pepper traced the development of P&G's business in Russia during the tumultuous 1990s as the company pioneered the bumpy road that was Russia's new economy and new free market at that time.

insert space

2011-12

Andrei Illarionov is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. From 1993 to 1994, Illarionov served as chief economic adviser to the prime minister of the Russian Federation, Viktor Chernomyrdin. He resigned in February 1994 to protest changes in the government’s economic policy and founded the Institute of Economic Analysis. From 2000 to December 2005, he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Illarionov has coauthored several economic programs for Russian governments and has written three books and more than 300 articles on Russian economic and social policies.

insert space

2009-10

Philip Dimitrov, EU Ambassador to Georgia, and former Prime Minister of Bulgaria

Philip Dimitrov served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 1991. He was appointed as the Ambassador of Bulgaria in April of 1997 at the United Nations. From 1998 to 2002 he was the Ambassador of Bulgaria to the United States. He was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2003. Philip Dimitrov has authored several books including "The New Democracies and the Transatlantic Link".

insert space

2008-09

Maria Gaidar, Founder of Democratic Alternative (DA!)

Maria Gaidar is a political activist from Russia who has challenged the Putin regime on its violations of electoral freedom. She is the daughter of the former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, who launched economic reforms in Russia in the 1990's. Ms. Gaidar is the founder of the youth political organization Democratic Alternative (DA!), and is a leader of the anti-Putin organization The Other Russia as well as the opposition Union of Right Forces party. Gaidar, who is currently pursuing a masters degree in public administration at Harvard, previously served as deputy governor of the Kirov region.

insert space

2007-08

Susan Eisenhower, The Eisenhower Group, and Roald Sagdeev, University of Maryland

Susan Eisenhower is President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc. She has consulted for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies doing business in the emerging markets of the former Soviet Union. Eisenhower also serves as Chairman of the Eisenhower Institute’s Leadership and Public Policy Programs, where she was the Institute’s founding director and the first president and became known for her work in the former Soviet Union and in the energy field. She has testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy towards the region of the former Soviet Union. Susan Eisenhower is an expert on international security, and relations between the Russian Federation and the United States.

Insert blank

Ronald Sagdeev is a Soviet and Russian expert in plasma physics and a former director of the Space Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He served as a science advisor to former President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Sagdeev is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and is a Senior Advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, where he assists with issues involving Russia and countries in the former Soviet Union. Ronald Sagdeev is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland.

2006-07

Aleksandr Kwasniewski, former President of Poland

Aleksander Kwasniewski served as the President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He participated in the famous “Round-Table” negotiations in Poland that finally brought the peaceful transformation of Poland and the whole Central and Eastern Europe from communism to democracy.He was a co-author of the new democratic Constitution of Poland, which he signed into law on July 16th, 1997.

Insert blank

2005-06

Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union

MIkhail Gorbachev was the seventh and last leader of the Soviet Union. He was previously the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. Gorbachev's policies of glasnot and perestroika, as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

insert blank

2004-05

Constantin Orbelian, Conductor of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra

The pianist and conductor Constantine Orbelian is the first American ever to become music director of an ensemble in Russia. His appointment in 1991 as Music Director of the celebrated Moscow Chamber Orchestra was a breakthrough event, and came in the midst of Orbelian's successful career as a concert pianist. Orbelian made his concert debut as a pianist at the age of 11 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. In his early teens he went to the then Soviet Union on a music scholarship, then studied at Juilliard.He has been the musical director of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra from 1991, Philharmonia of Russia and State Academic Chamber Orchestra of Russia. In January, 2004 President Putin awarded Orbelian the coveted title "Honored Artist of Russia," a title never before bestowed on a non-Russian citizen.

insert blank

2002-03

Vitaly Komar, Artist

Vitaly Komar is a Russian born painter and performance artist. He was born in Moscow and graduated from the Stroganov School of Art and Design. Komar experienced Soviet censorship when his work was removed from the 8th Exhibition of Young Artists in 1969. Komar and fellow artist Alex Melamid were expelled from the Young Division of the Artist's Union for "distortion of Soviet reality". In 1974 Komar was arrested for "Art Belongs to the People", which was a performance in a private apartment. Komar and Melamid were the first Russian artists to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

insert blank

2001-02

Yegor Gaidar. former Prime Minister of Russia

Yegor Timurovich Gaidar was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician, and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from June 15 to December 14, 1992. He was best known as the architect of the controversial shock therapy reforms administered in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which brought him both praise and harsh criticism. Many Russians held him responsible for the economic hardships that plagued the country in the 1990s that resulted in mass poverty and hyperinflation among other things, although liberals praised him as a man who did what had to be done to save the country from complete collapse. Gaidar died on December 16, 2009, at the age of 53, from pulmonary edema.

insert space

2000-01

James Billington, Librarian of Congress

James Billington served as the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars from 1973-1987. He founded the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Billington has authored several books including "The Icon and the Axe", "Fire in the Minds of Men", and "Russia transformed: Breakthrough to Hope". Billington has accompanied ten congressional delegations to Russia and the former Soviet Union. In June 1988 he accompanied President Ronald Reagan to the Soviet Summit in Moscow.

Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies

The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies is an interdisciplinary center devoted to programs designed to foster interdisciplinary research on the most important questions relating to the future of Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia and to service and learning activities that provide a greater understanding of this region for the student community.